All people (mostly women) who suffer from fibromyalgia will finally be able to breathe! No, their illness is not just psychosomatic. Yes, it is a real pathology with a cause and effects. This discovery is so important that it made the front page of the journal of the American Academy of Pain, accompanied by an editorial full of praise by Professor Robert Gerwin of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (Baltimore).
A team of researchers from Albany, United States, led by Dr. Frank Rice Phillip Albrecht, has identified certain alterations in our body that would be responsible for fibromyalgia. When our temperature drops (hypothermia) or rises (hyperthermia), we have a kind of thermostat inside the body, the hypothalamus, which allows our body to maintain its balance. When we use our muscles, especially in the hands and feet, another thermostat called an arteriovenous shunt helps us keep our temperature stable. This shunt acts as a valve between the arterioles or veins which supply the body with oxygenated blood to allow the organs to function properly, and the venules, which carry waste products from the blood.
However, according to the Albany researchers, it is a dysfunction of this atteriovenous shunt that is responsible for the pain of fibromyalgia. “When this shunt is defective, the muscles and skin tissue cannot be nourished properly and their wastes cannot be flushed out. This results in an accumulation of lactic acid in the muscles and deep tissue which affects the muscular system and causes pain that travels from one part of the body to another ”explain the doctors. “This shunt dysfunction also sends the wrong messages to our central nervous system and the hypersensitized nerves in turn send pain signals.”
This discovery should finally pave the way for research into the treatment of the pain of fibromyalgia, a disease that affects between 2 and 5% of the French population.
